Improvement

Finally, the finish doesn't feel like a complete downgrade.

However, the arms really don't make a lot of sense and the eyes are up too high on his skull. I don't think there's enough sense of weight on his foot to the right, even if he is tiptoeing. Also, the sock cloth on the end of the toe to the left doesn't look like it's totally logical. It should be pointed more downward, at an angle.

I got the idea to draw this from Jory. Both he and I love the old cartoon trope of bedtime getup, cap and candle included. He draws it on top of a lot of my doodles when we have a class together, so of course he put one of the bazillion Mickeys I've drawn this past week. So, I decided to draw one, myself.

A dapper chap

I didn't have the model sheet for reference in the finish, and it shows in where it's less confident (I'm looking at you, pants). You can see where I changed some stuff in the red; before the arm felt too long and sort of awkward, so I brought it in, but the hand wasn't as good. I just gotta keep reminding myself this is a learning process...

Meh, it's a start

It drives me nuts when I, while trying to finish a picture, notice problems... then when I look at the finish I notice that I like the original more. The eyes don't work right in space, either.

Tom poses - further along!

So, jeez, I finally "finished" these poses. I put that in quotation marks because, uh, they aren't perfect by any measure and could still use work. But I brought them to a point at which they resemble complete drawings.

Also note: These drawings are NOT this dark in real life!! I just upped the contrast so that some of the blue lines might be visible... kind of in vain, because so much of it just wasn't picked up by the scanner. But you guys saw most of my construction progress, you know I used it.

I had a lot of doubts about pose 1 because I couldn't think of a way to make the silhouette more clear, but I actually think this one's face turned out the best. It's cute, though I don't know how satisfied I am with the eyebrows. Tom has spotted something appetizing, presumably Jerry.

Did I mention that I started this exercise trying to draw Jerry, and then I realized after a few days of frustration that, duh, I don't like Jerry. I've never liked Jerry. I always wanted him to get eaten. Probably because I like cats.

By the way, I used mostly Preston Blair's Tom for reference, with a teeny bit of Eisenberg to make sense of the muzzle. I like the big hands and feet, though despite my efforts to thin them up, they at places (particularly where the foot is curved) look too bulbous, still. John told me to watch for it, and I tried, but I think curled toes are too cute. I might go over them later...


I like this one's nearer hand. It wound up being a nicer form than my original silhouette idea was. The face, here, though, is the worst of these. It's too squished and lacks appeal in the eye area. I need to do some more hierarchy studies of squished, wrinkly faces... The eyes/eyebrows look bad in a way I don't know how to articulate aside from "ugly" and "amateurish." Yuck. #2 has slightly less bad, but still present, versions of these problems. Like I said, more facial studies needed.


This pose definitely came the farthest, I think. It's a lot better than my first version. Wowee, a functional silhouette!

It's not exactly radical or crazy what I did with his face here, but it was the hardest of the 4 expressions to pull off (which is sad because it's pretty simple), but it turned out halfway decent. I like the nearer half of the muzzle-- it's really defined. The mouth looks clear. I wish I could say the same things about the eye area, though, again. It just looks a mess, and the more you struggle with areas like that, the messier the paper gets, and the harder it is to get a finer point.

Also, the upper hand looks like it's being supported by an invisible mound of some sort. I think I just put the arm that leads up to it too far down, so it doesn't make spatial sense.

Well, I've got an awful lot of work ahead of me, but I'm glad I finally "finished" these. I need to do more. Many more, until this is all second nature.

NEXT: A fun Howie Post composition drawing John posted!!

More Tom

Dental work was awful!



I've been roughy trying to figure out how to improve the silhouettes on the poses in the last post... Do they read more clearly now? I can't figure out how to work on the first pose's silhouette anymore and still get what I want across, but I worked on these 3. I'm still pretty unhappy with the last pose, but I think the other two look better now. More to come.

Tom poses, phase 1

I'm a little nervous about this post!

Firstly because I finally am doing some of my own poses and while I've been doing my own goony cartoons my whole life, they've been relatively flat and didn't really strive for anything in particular but my own gratification. I'm trying for 100% constructed poses, informed by principles.

Unfortunately, since that's a lot to balance, it not only took me several weeks of trying to get comfortable with the idea, but I also had to compromise some ideas. I tried to do much harder stuff but I figured that I'm not letting myself off too easy if I try to make very conservative drawings at first. I need to understand, and it's more important that I do that than try to wow the world with anything faux-original.

Anyway, so here goes. I'm imagining they'll get reworked before I put any sort of finish on them, but here's the basic construction.

ASLO: aren't empty eyes so creepy? I figured I'd draw the sockets in clearly so that I could wrap the eyelids around them in a way that made sense, but right now he just looks so wide-eyed and strange. Haha.

That eye on the right doesn't wrap quite right. Will fix in the next versions...

(Ignore the weird scaling/blurriness on this one. Blogger shrunk up the thumbnail, and I stretched it a bit so it wouldn't look so ridiculous with the others)
Last one is probably the weakest. It has some problems I can't quite articulate. The fact that it doesn't have wrinkly details also sorta might be lending itself to some feeling of woodiness. I dunno.

Next: More work on these, possibly some Howie Post practices.